There's always been a question bugging my mind. Why just Rowbotham? What I mean by this is;

When quoting or citing a test done, you mainly (60-70%) of the time, get one about or from Rowbotham. Why is he the one that stands out? He went against the entire scientific community, but failed, unlike so many who have been proven true. Its however many years later, and his experiments and observations still haven't been globally agreed upon. Why is he of such importance? Why is there nearly nobody else in the scientific community quoted as much as him?

and his experiments and observations still haven't been globally agreed upon.

Is this just a poor choice of words on your part or are you expecting us to explain why Rowbotham's ideas haven't been GLOBALLY agreed upon?

As to why is Rowbotham important ... because he is the guy who founded the modern flat earth society. Without him , this forum doesn't exist. Its like saying 'there were lots of prophets, why do you keep talking about Jesus?'. A Christian is going to look at you with the same disdain as I have for you now.

Rowbotham was not always right. The above link describes his experiment to determine the true distance of the Sun. If a line is extended 400 miles south from London we come to a region of SW France, just south in fact of a line between Cognac and Limoges. Rowbotham predicts that from that distance the Sun should be directly overhead on the date of his experiment. That would be right if the Earth was flat and the Sun only 700 miles from the surface of the Earth. However that can easily be demonstrated to be incorrect. In fairness, Rowbothams stated altitude angles for the Sun as seen from London Bridge and Brighton (61 degrees and 64 degrees) are correct.

The altitude of the Sun as seen from 400 miles south of London is actually 66 degrees. A difference of only a couple of degrees as seen from London. That angle is what we would expect based on the RET stated value of 25,000 miles as the circumference of the Earth. The missing 24 degrees from Rowbothams prediction is accounted for by the amount of curvature of the Earths surface over a 400 mile distance. At such an altitude atmospheric refraction would not be enouth to account for the difference.

Honestly I see REers mentioning Rowbotham as a defining authority way more than FEers. At the end of the day the biggest reason Rowbotham gets referenced is just because he was prolific. Nine times out of ten, if you have a basic question it was something he wrote on. Why not reference the pre-existing answer?

My DE model explained here. Open to questions, but if you're curious start there rather than expecting me to explain it all from scratch every time.

Honestly I see REers mentioning Rowbotham as a defining authority way more than FEers. At the end of the day the biggest reason Rowbotham gets referenced is just because he was prolific. Nine times out of ten, if you have a basic question it was something he wrote on. Why not reference the pre-existing answer?

Perhaps because 9 times out of 10 he was wrong and cited inferences and assertions as fact and fitted it all into his scriptural literalism.

Honestly I see REers mentioning Rowbotham as a defining authority way more than FEers. At the end of the day the biggest reason Rowbotham gets referenced is just because he was prolific. Nine times out of ten, if you have a basic question it was something he wrote on. Why not reference the pre-existing answer?

Perhaps because 9 times out of 10 he was wrong and cited inferences and assertions as fact and fitted it all into his scriptural literalism.

And nine times out of ten REers can't tell the difference between 'wrong' and 'doesn't fit their preconceptions,' what's your point?

My DE model explained here. Open to questions, but if you're curious start there rather than expecting me to explain it all from scratch every time.

Honestly I see REers mentioning Rowbotham as a defining authority way more than FEers. At the end of the day the biggest reason Rowbotham gets referenced is just because he was prolific. Nine times out of ten, if you have a basic question it was something he wrote on. Why not reference the pre-existing answer?

Perhaps because 9 times out of 10 he was wrong and cited inferences and assertions as fact and fitted it all into his scriptural literalism.

And nine times out of ten REers can't tell the difference between 'wrong' and 'doesn't fit their preconceptions,' what's your point?

"Why not reference the pre-existing answer?" One that is often found to be wrong. Hence the whole debate thing. The point being, to the OP, why (and maybe it's just because of Bishop) that a bunch of answers/explanations point back to one guy? Are there more modern, progressive FE philosophers we should be looking toward?

I think the inference is that whenever any aspect of FET is called into question, more often than not there is some reference made by FE'ers about what Rowbotham did, said or whatever as if he was always right. However whenever it can be shown that Rowbotham was not actually accurate then they are more inclined to distance themselves.

I have already shown how two of Rowbothams experiments/reasonings are not accurate for the simple reason that he was making an incorrect assumption. That is true for many experiments made on the RE side as well in the past. But RE theory is based on the accumulated contributions of a lot of people while FE theory seems to be centred around or biased towards the contributions of just a very select few.

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As to why is Rowbotham important ... because he is the guy who founded the modern flat earth society. Without him , this forum doesn't exist

Hmmm.. not sure I agree entirely with that statement. I can accept that Rowbotham might have been the originator of the flat Earth movement but he was dead and buried long before the Internet was even thought of so why is the existence of this forum so reliant on him? I would have thought and hoped that FET has developed a bit since his time over 150 years ago. Our model of the Universe as we know it now is less than a century old.

Rowbotham's work on the topic is still much more detailed and systematic than any other studies so far.

But...he was wrong, wasn't he?He's wrong about perspective, that isn't how perspective works at all.He was wrong about the moon - he said it was translucent for goodness sake, and he said it emits its own light which it demonstrably doesn't.He was wrong about pretty much everything, his ideas were not accepted by any serious scientists and he has been largely forgotten about by history.I'd never heard of him till I found this place.

And his motivation for his book is clearly a misguided interpretation of Scripture.He was not a man of science, he never worked professionally in a science relevant to his writings, I don't believe he has any published peer reviewed papers.

He is not an authority. If he is who your basing your beliefs on then you're in trouble.

It was science which claimed to have performed experiments that moonlight cooled thermometers through a telescope and that stars were seen to occult the moon. Rowbotham just reported on it. Look into what quotations and references are.

It was science which claimed to have performed experiments that moonlight cooled thermometers through a telescope and that stars were seen to occult the moon. Rowbotham just reported on it. Look into what quotations and references are.

Science also claimed there were only 4 elements and that the earth was the centre of the universe and all kids of things we now know to be wrong.Just cherry picking bits of science which back up your ideas and ignoring all the bits which don’t is disingenuous. Especially when the bits that don’t often supersede the bits which do.

Science demonstrated the existence of other elements through experiment. Science also demonstrated the cooling effects of moonlight through experiment. In order to show those things to be incorrect, contradictory experiments to those of science would need to be given.